This tutorial describes one
process for making a simple painting in Photoshop. Of course, there are other
approaches, and probably better approaches, but this is how I do my work, for
the curious. These steps are intended only as guidelines -
not as a definitive guide. Experimentation is the key to good art, after
all, not mindless copying. That said, enjoy, and I hope this tutorial proves
useful.

1. LINE DRAWING

The first step should always be
the line drawing. Without a strong basis, any painting is doomed to failure. By
'strong', of course, I don't mean bold lines or heavy shading. I'm referring to
sound anatomy and perspective. As you can see, there isn't much detail in the
line-drawing--the details can be ironed out later during the painting stage, as
long as the general linework is in place. Ordinarily, one would draw in the
background as well at this stage, but in this case, the background is going to
be flat and stylized, so the usual issues of perspective will be moot.

2. BACKGROUND DRAWING

Next up is the background. I
always leave the line-drawing as the top layer, and add new layers underneath
it, so I can switch the sketch on and off to see how I'm doing, or fill in the
lines. In this case, that involves a repeating motif of stylized hypodermic
needles on a green circle. This was done by selecting an oval area with
Photoshop's SELECTION TOOLS,
and then using the STROKE COMMAND
in the EDIT MENU to
draw a black outline. The needle was only drawn once, and then copied and pasted
at different angles around the oval. To draw the syringe, I used the rectangular
SELECTION TOOL, then
the oval SELECTION TOOL
(holding down SHIFT to attach it to the
existing rectangular selection), then filled it in with the PAINT BUCKET. The needle
itself was added with the LINE TOOL.

Once the spiky oval was complete, I added another layer
underneath it, and reselected the area. I then used the PAINT BUCKET to fill it
in with the nasty green colour pictured here.

Next, I added the basic colours of the skin, hair, and skirt on another layer,
on top of the background layers, of course. This was done with the
PAINTBRUSH TOOL,
using a soft brush to avoid overly stark, unnatural-looking edges.

3. ADDING
FORM
AND LIGHTING

At this point, I was ready to add
form and lighting. I decided to place the light source overhead and slightly to
the right, in this case. This is always the fun part--and also the easiest part
to mess up, if you're not careful. As you can see, I started with a deep brown,
defining the areas of deepest shadow. I did this on a separate layer, just in
case I wasn't satisfied with the result, and wanted to start again. Slowly, I
built up the highlights, layer by layer, moving from darkest to lightest. I used
the AIRBRUSH TOOL at
10-30% opacity to do this. The last step was to add a Multiply layer, and add
richness to the shadows with red and green lowlights. Note that the highlights
on the shoulder and face are not white-they are actually blue and yellow. Pure white doesn't translate well to
print, and it doesn't look very natural, either.

I followed exactly the same procedure with the drapery, defining the creases in
the garment with dark colours, then moving gradually towards the highlights.

The hair was done using exactly
the same method as the skin and the dress, with a few minor variations. It's
impossible to draw every strand of hair, so I first decided where the locks
would fall, and then built up colours and highlights from there. I used reds,
greens, blues, and yellows here, allowing the complementary colours to create
the illusion of depth. I used a small, soft-edged brush (found in the Brushes
palette) for most of the strokes, and a larger brush for defining bigger
segments of hair.

5. FINISHING TOUCHES

And...the final result. I added a
few finishing touches, like the background shadow (made by using the COPY MERGED command with
only the figure layers showing, then running the resulting merged image through
the DESATURATE and
THRESHOLD FILTERS (in the
Image --> Adjust pull-down menu).
The image was done at about 6 times the size it is pictured here, so I could
work on the details without causing serious eyestrain.